Marijuana is the third most popular recreational drug in America (behind only alcohol and tobacco), and has been used by nearly 100 million Americans. According to government surveys, some 25 million Americans have smoked marijuana in the past year, and more than 14 million do so regularly despite harsh laws against its use. Our public policies should reflect this reality, not deny it.
Marijuana is far less dangerous than alcohol or tobacco. Around 50,000 people die each year from alcohol poisoning. Similarly, more than 400,000 deaths each year are attributed to tobacco smoking. By comparison, marijuana is nontoxic and cannot cause death by overdose. According to the prestigious European medical journal, The Lancet, "The smoking of cannabis, even long-term, is not harmful to health. ... It would be reasonable to judge cannabis as less of a threat ... than alcohol or tobacco."
Get the facts. See our Library
NORML supports the removal of all penalties for the private possession and responsible use of marijuana by adults, including cultivation for personal use, and casual nonprofit transfers of small amounts. This policy, known as decriminalization, removes the consumer -- the marijuana smoker -- from the criminal justice system.
More than 30 percent of the U.S. population lives under some form ofmarijuana decriminalization, and according to government and academic studies, these laws have not contributed to an increase in marijuana consumption nor negatively impacted adolescent attitudes toward drug use.
See Personal Use for more information.
Enforcing marijuana prohibition costs taxpayers an estimated $10 billion annually and results in the arrest of more than 847,000 individuals per year -- far more than the total number of arrestees for all violent crimes combined, including murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault.
| YEAR | MARIJUANA ARRESTS |
| 2008 | 847,864 |
| 2007 | 872,721 |
| 2006 | 829,625 |
| 2005 | 786,545 |
| 2004 | 771,608 |
| 2003 | 755,187 |
| 2002 | 697,082 |
| 2001 | 723,627 |
| 2000 | 734,498 |
| 1999 | 704,812 |
| 1998 | 682,885 |
| 1997 | 695,200 |
| 1996 | 641,642 |
| 1995 | 588,963 |
| 1994 | 499,122 |
| 1993 | 380,689 |
| 1992 | 342,314 |
| 1991 | 287,850 |
| 1990 | 326,850 |
Of those charged with marijuana violations, approximately 89 percent,754,224 Americans were charged with possession only. The remaining93,640 individuals were charged with "sale/manufacture," a category that includes all cultivation offenses, even those where the marijuana was being grown for personal or medical use. In past years, roughly 30 percent of those arrested were age 19 or younger.
NORML supports the eventual development of a legally controlled market for marijuana, where consumers could buy marijuana for personal use from a safe legal source. This policy, generally known as legalization, exists on various levels in a handful of European countrieslike The Netherlands and Switzerland, both of which enjoy lower rates of adolescent marijuana use than the U.S. Such a system would reduce many of the problems presently associated with the prohibition of marijuana, including the crime, corruption and violence associated with a "black market."
For more information, see About NORML.
Medical Use
Of all the negative consequences of marijuana prohibition, none is as tragic as the denial of medicinal cannabis to the tens of thousands of patients who could benefit from its therapeutic use.
Modern research suggests that cannabis is a valuable aid in the treatment of a wide range of clinical applications.[4] These include pain relief -- particularly of neuropathic pain (pain from nerve damage) -- nausea, spasticity, glaucoma, and movement disorders.[5] Marijuana is also a powerful appetite stimulant, specifically for patients suffering from HIV, the AIDS wasting syndrome, or dementia.[6] Emerging research suggests that marijuana's medicinal properties may protect the body against some types of malignant tumors[7] and are neuroprotective.
Currently, more than 60 U.S. and international health organizationssupport granting patients immediate legal access to medicinal marijuana under a physician's supervision.
See our Medical Use section for more information.
Legal Issues
Driven by the Drug War, the U.S. prison population is six to ten times as high as most Western European nations. The United States is a close second only to Russia in its rate of incarceration per 100,000 people. In 2005, more than 786,000 people were arrested in this country for marijuana-related offenses alone.
Marijuana prohibition causes more problems than it solves, and ruins thousands more lives than it supposedly tries to save. The NORML Legal Committee provides legal support and assistance to victims of the current marijuana laws. NORML also monitors developments in state and federal law, and files appellate and amicus curiae ("friend of the court") briefs in cases which may affect the interpretation of existing marijuana laws, or which will, hopefully, change them.
See our Legal Issues section for more information.
Industrial Hemp
Hemp produces a much higher yield per acre than do common substitutes such as cotton and requires few pesticides. In addition, hemp has an average growing cycle of only 100 days and leaves the soil virtually weed-free for the next planting.
The hemp plant is currently harvested for commercial purposes in over 30 nations, including Canada, Japan and the European Union. Although it grows wild across much of America and presents no public health or safety threat, hemp is nevertheless routinely uprooted and destroyed by law enforcement. Each year, approximately 98% of all the marijuana eliminated by the DEA's "Domestic Cannabis Eradication/Suppression Program" is actually hemp.
California state lawmakers arescheduled to hear testimony tomorrow in support of taxing and regulating the commercial production and distribution of marijuana for adults age 21 and older.
[Paul Armentano updates: Just a quick update for folks. There is extensive media coverage of today's hearing. Go toGoogle News and type in "Ammiano marijuana." There are well over 100 news items, ranging from the New York Times to UPI to Bloomberg to AP, etc. The hearings were also carried live onThe California Channel, but the video has not yet been archived. (Check back to the Cal Channel website tomorrow or Friday, but here's a five minute clip care of youtube.) NORML's testimony from today is available here and here. Following the hearing, many of us met with numerous key lawmakers (and their staff) on the Public Safety and Health Committees to discuss the issue further. (I had four meetings myself.)
As for "what's next?" First off, this was an INFORMATIONAL HEARING only. There will be NO Committee vote at this time. There will likely be a second informational hearing scheduled before the Assembly Committee on Health. After that, the Public Safety Committee is anticipated to hold a separate hearing specific to AB 390, the Marijuana Control, Regulation, and Education Act in January 2010. IF we have the votes at that time to pass the bill out of Committee, the Chair (who is the bill's sponsor) will call it for a vote sometime this spring. If we don't have the votes on the Committee, then the bill will languish in Committee. It's that simple.]
Members of the California Assembly Committee on Public Safety have called for the hearing, entitled “Examining the Fiscal and Legal Implication of the Legalization and Regulation of Marijuana.” The hearing will be chaired by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco), sponsor of Assembly Bill 390, the Marijuana Control, Regulation, and Education Act. It will take place at 10am in room 126 of the State Capitol.
A press conference will take place prior to the hearing at 9 am in Capitol Room 317.
California NORML Coordinator Dale Gieringer is scheduled to testify before the Committee at noon. [Editor's note: Read Dale's written testimony here.] NORML has also submitted prepared testimony to the Committee, which is available online here.
Several representatives from law enforcement, including the California Police Chiefs Association and the Office of the Attorney General’s Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement, are scheduled to testify in opposition to the bill.
“The criminal prohibition of marijuana provides law enforcement and state regulators with no legitimate market controls,” states NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano in prepared testimony. “This absence of state and local government controls jeopardizes rather than promotes public safety. I urge this Committee to move forward with the enactment of sensible regulations for legalizing marijuana.”
Tomorrow’s hearing marks one of the first times since 1913 that the California legislature has debated ending criminal prohibition.
If you live in California you can contact your member of the Assembly in advance of tomorrow’s historic hearing here.
The article that I feel is problematic is Marijuana use holds risks, such as drug addiction from US today. This article had two the perspectives of people that believed marijuana is very bad for you and is not a safe alternative to even morphine. Both people were extremely against any sort of marijuana laws being passed. This really amazed me because one of the people perspectives was someone who believed that he was addicted to the drug, marijuana for more than 30 years. The other person that had a view on the subject was not as biased against the drug rather just arguing the fact that it was bad for you, but then contradicting herself saying that, “in a half century of forensic pathology practice, and having performed 17,000 autopsies, I have never attributed a death directly to a marijuana overdose.
I disagreed with this article because of the way some of the information was presented. I feel some information was presented in a completely opinion based format and then other information was presented a medical facts that weren’t supported.
LOS ANGELES -- With little notice and even less controversy, marijuana is now available as a medical treatment in California to almost anyone who tells a willing physician he would feel better if he smoked.
Pot is now retailed over the counter in hundreds of storefronts across Los Angeles and is credited with reviving a section of downtown Oakland, where an entrepreneur sells out classes offering "quality training for the cannabis industry." The tabloid LA Journal of Education for Medical Marijuana is fat with ads for Magic Purple, Strawberry Cough and other offerings in more than 400 "dispensaries" operating in the city
